


You Don't Understand Me

by taotu



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Bartender Remus Lupin, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Musician Sirius Black, San Francisco Bay Area
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 04:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21112802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taotu/pseuds/taotu
Summary: “Okay, sorry, I know this is completely off-topic and I’m interrupting a conversation I haven’t been listening to for the past five minutes — but I wouldtotallyfuck Sirius Black.”





	You Don't Understand Me

**Author's Note:**

> Remus is 22, Sirius is 44.
> 
> _only read this if you're ready for extreme levels of haphazardly-edited stream of consciousness writing borne out of me being frantically horny on main. i really don't know what this is_

“Okay, sorry, I know this is completely off-topic and I’m interrupting a conversation I haven’t been listening to for the past five minutes — but I would _totally_ fuck Sirius Black,” says Mary, eyes glued to her phone, her hand distractingly batting the air between Remus and Lily.

Remus, who’s been drying the same glass for those five minutes, continues to do so. It was Lily who’d been domineering their conversation anyway, at least until the interruption.

Lily drops her toothpicked olive back into her martini glass. It’d been on the way to her mouth mid-rant — until the interruption, naturally. Her eyes swivel to Mary, thin, bronzey-red brows raised. _“What?”_

Mary shrugs, pouting at her phone. It casts a blue-white glow over her pale face, throws highlighted flecks on her shiny lipgloss. “It’s just — I was just realizing, y’know, that I’d let him fuck me sideways, upwards, downwards. Fuck me all the way to Nebraska.” Her brows pinch pensively, and her finger swipes, presumptively to another picture of _Sirius Black_. “I’d catch six diseases from a glory hole for him.”

Lily’s nostrils flare with distaste. She looks toward Remus, who appears characteristically amused and remains silent. Then, around the olive she finally prises from the toothpick, she mutters, “From Black Avenue?”

Mary snorts. “_No_, the other Sirius Black, the one from our kindergarten class who picked his nose and ate the boogers. _Yes_, from Black Avenue. Well, technically once upon a _time_ from Black Avenue, but he’s on tour right now with his newer band, er… _Sablier?_ They’re playing at The Fillmore tonight, actually, which fucking sucks, ‘cos I forgot about the presale and then the tickets sold out literally in three seconds.”

A spry, white-haired gentleman takes the seat to Lily’s left, and Remus sets his long-since-dry glass down to tend to him and fix him his requested whiskey on the rocks.

Lily’s tone is derisive. “Isn’t he old?”

“Forty-four isn’t old, Lily.”

“That’s twice your age.”

“But, like, after a certain point, age is just a number —”

“Hasn’t he had, like, three wives? There’s gotta be _something_ wrong —”

“Well, okay, the guy seems like a bit of an asshole —”

“Wait, that’s him? Mare, _Jesus_.”

“What?!”

“He’s… Mare, he has a dad bod. And he’s pasty. And his face has that — like, that bloated, I-did-hella-drugs-when-I-was-twenty-and-dumb look to it.”

“_Okay_, okay, fair, most people look better when they’re younger, you can quit laying into him. I’d still fuck him, though.”

“Are his under-eyes really that red or did he do his makeup to look like he’d been crying?”

“But, like, it’s that… that kinda creepy bad-boy musician thing he has going on. You’ve _never_ been like, ‘oh, you’re gross but I’d bang you in a heartbeat’ about anyone? Ever?”

Lily snorts. “No?”

“Need I remind you about the frat boys, Lils?”

“Mary…”

“Yeah, we get it, Sirius Black is no James Potter. You’ve made that _quite_ clear.”

“For god’s sake, _please_ don’t bring _James Potter_ into this —”

“Children,” murmurs Remus, setting refills of Lily’s martini and Mary’s club soda onto the counter, “Be civil.”

“Would you fuck him, Remus?” Mary turns her phone on him, and as he’s wiping the condensation on his hands down the front of his apron, he finds himself squinting at the middle-aged face of a shaggy-black-haired man.

“I’m getting a bit of a Sweeney Todd vibe,” is all Remus has time to say, before Lily’s slamming her drained martini glass onto the counter and clearing her throat.

“I think I’ll try the Frosé, now, Remus,” she states.

Looking from the phone to Lily’s rounded green eyes, Remus’ shoulders slump. The lengthy ingredient list scrolls through his mind like closing credits. “Are you serious?” he mutters, though it’s his job, and he’ll be doing it for four more hours that night while Drunk-Ass Bitch after Drunk-Ass Bitch teeters toward the bar to request three different complex cocktails he can’t fix in one shaker. And he could pour rubbing alcohol into a groovy glass and drop food coloring in and she wouldn’t know the difference in the taste, would throw it back in one gulp anyway.

Mary catches on, locking her phone and laying it flat on the table. “And I’ll have the —” she squints at the menu board, just for theatricality’s sake — “Garden Party Gimlet.”

He crosses his eyes as he reaches for the mint leaves. Then he pastes on a smile. “Right away, ladies.”

Remus has produced an immaculate Garden Party Gimlet and is halfway through Lily’s Frosé when Mary gets a text. “Oh, oh, hold that thought, Remus — or drink, I should say. Marlene’s at F8, can we go meet her?”

Lily grimaces. “And pay the twenty-dollar cover?”

Mary’s already dragging her off the barstool. “You bought my cat food this week, remember? I’ll cover you.”

Lily sighs. Surrenders. Flashes Remus a smile that’s mildly apologetic. Says, “Bye, love you!” and stomps off arm in arm with Mary.

He’s familiar with this routine. Mary requests an open tab, then leaves so impulsively she doesn’t get her card back until she next sees Remus.

He stares witheringly at the gimlet. Then he gathers himself, places the abandoned cocktail on a tray, and pours a row of shots to take to the gaggle of girls crammed into the booth furthest from the bar. It’s only justifiable, as it’s Court_nay’s_ — that’s Courtnay with an A — birthday.

* * *

It’s five past one but Remus is running at full speed after his midnight espresso shot. Courtnay and her friends left hours ago likely to go somewhere trendier, where the music is louder and tech-ier and the drinks more expensive, where the bar’s lit up underneath in neon red like at F8, not by hanging, dinged copper dome lights. The light by table six is out, and the one nearest the end of the bar has been flickering sporadically. Remus should tell someone about that.

And Remus doesn’t notice a man at that end of the bar until now, now that the man's not quite looking his way but still sitting up with the expectance of a customer waiting to place an order. It’s quiet, just a few people milling about, and he should’ve seen him sooner, but the guy’s hair is black as his clothes and it’s almost dusky in the bar; they dim the lights a notch each hour until closing.

Sashaying a few steps toward his end of the bar, Remus says smoothly, “Sorry about the wait, sir, what can I get you?” as he wipes the counter clean by the guy’s elbows.

There’s a tug to the man’s lips. His credit card’s proffered between his fingers. “Jack and coke, if you would.”

_So he’s a Brit,_ thinks Remus. He returns the smile with a cock of his brow, swipes the card from his hand. “I would and I will. Open or closed?”

A beat passes as he thinks. “You’re probably closing soon, yeah?”

Remus casts a glance around the dim room, shrugs. “We stop bar service in twenty, close the doors in fifty.”

The man nods. “Closed, I suppose.”

Remus flips the card in his hand and swivels toward the register. He rings up the drink, pours it, generous with the Jack, and sets it down before his customer. As if on cue to the tap of glass on varnished wood, the light above flickers to life, and in the hazy, lazy lightbulb glow, Remus makes full-on eye contact with the stranger, moon-pale face and gray murky eyes and all, hair lank and black and a bit frizzed.

Remus simply blinks, manages a half-smile. “That’s not creepy at all,” he mutters, peering up into the lamplight.

With the drink to his lips, the man says, “Should maybe fix that.”

Remus shrugs, hands on his hips. “I don’t do lightbulbs. Only alcohol.”

A hum. “Your house must be very dark.”

“_So_ dark. And wet, too, from all the alcohol.”

It’s a rough joke, hardly a joke, and it doesn’t merit a laugh, but the guy gives him one, a warm chuckle that’s less audible and more a huff of breath and a tug of shoulders. Remus’ answering smile is nothing less than awkward and he turns away to refill the beer of a regular.

It’s 1:43 and the bar top is shiny and lemony and Remus’ hands are pruning. The shuffle of crisp dollar bills in the tip jar in the near-silent bar — as silent as one can get with raucous drunks in the street in the dead of night — is what first gets his attention, and when he springs up from sorting the fridge, he’s eye to eye with the man with black hair.

“Hello,” says Remus, then blinks. “Or goodbye?” He smiles. “Sorry.”

They’re of a height, practically. Six-two-and-something, more or less, Remus would venture to guess. His mirror across the counter breathes in through his nose, out, taps long, knobby fingers against the bar. “Are you doing anything after this?” asks the man, voice thick in a way Remus can’t describe.

And the indescribability makes Remus’ gut twist. _Go home, get the fuck to bed?_ That’s the right answer. “Not that I know of,” he mutters stupidly, like he doesn’t do the same thing every fucking night.

“Yeah?” The shadows under the man’s eyes are dark and purplish, not entirely because of crappy lighting.

Remus might as well be holding his breath for all the oxygen that’s getting to his head right now. Something, some strange physiological mechanism somewhere in his bag of flesh and bones, is blocking it. “I’m off in fifteen.”

The man leaves, but Remus sees him idle on the sidewalk through the tinted glass of the door, sees the orange glow of a cigarette being lit. His mouth tastes like espresso and like he’s not brushed his teeth in sixteen hours and he’s vaguely discomfited, and still he mechanically finishes his shift and clocks out and steps into the chill of a black San Francisco November night.

They make eye contact, both with a silent lift of brows. The homeless man who hangs around under the awning of the bar on weeknights cries out something garbled as the man, the nameless-but-not-truly-nameless man, steps away from the brick wall and drops his cigarette butt and starts down the street, gesturing for Remus to follow.

He’s wearing a fedora now, a black one.

Remus wraps the open lapels of his coat tight across his chest.

“It’s not far.” He says it to Remus over his shoulder like a promise. His eyes don’t fully look at him, but it’s not as if they don’t move to; it’s a look aimed toward him that doesn’t quite reach its target.

Remus is beside him now, breathing out steam into the cold air almost as opaque as cigarette smoke. He smiles, hopes it’s reassuring. “Alright.”

Under the tinge of the moon, his companion’s face is all the more… _moon_. Hollow craters for eyes. He thinks of Lily’s drug comment. And his heart picks up. Fast.

Remus is walking on thin, cracking ice. The last time he went home with a stranger was on the eve of his last birthday, his twenty-second, when he’d blacked out the whole night and woken up naked in a moldy apartment in South Berkeley beside a snoring, statuesque Eastern European water polo player, a senior at Cal. He’d deduced the last bit from the backpack he’d stepped on while sneaking out — _Cal Men’s Water Polo, _embroidered. He’d been too hungover to celebrate his birthday proper, but spent a good bit of the day alone in his room thinking about the dude’s biceps.

And that was nearly a year ago.

Then Remus is stepping into a brightly-lit hotel lobby, sparkling with grandiose chandeliers that could kill a man should they spontaneously come crashing down.

“Good evening, Mr. Black,” says the concierge, and then Remus has to acknowledge it, at least for the second it takes her to enunciate the singular syllable of his last name. Black nods vaguely in her direction. The elevator is prompt at arriving when they reach it. The moment they’re inside, Black slips a flask from somewhere inside his black blazer. He offers it to Remus, who mouths something like ‘I’m good’ and watches Black takes a gulp. They ascend fourteen floors. Black’s is the room furthest down the corridor, and when he lets Remus inside it’s dark, but the curtains are thrown open and let in the soft glimmer of the city — or at least the red-and-yellow glow of the McDonald’s sign across the street. The room’s massive, one of those with an unnecessary sitting nook Remus doubts anyone truly uses. The door clicks shut and Remus swallows. He’s not even nervous; at this point he’s more so wondering how the hell he ended up in a Ritz-Carlton when, as far as he’d known an hour ago, his plans were to go home and boil up Trader Joe’s dumplings and douse them in soy sauce and enjoy them on the couch in his underwear while he caught up on whatever depressing world news he’d slept through that morning.

“Er,” says Black. He’s looking out at the room, too, avoiding Remus’ eyes with what Remus has come to recognize as practiced evasiveness.

Remus thinks they’re there to sleep together, has ninety-nine percent confidence, but the tentativeness on Black’s face has him thinking otherwise in a panic until Black turns and faces him, hands clenching into fists around air more expensive than Remus has a right to breathe.

“If you want to —” Black begins, doesn’t finish. Remus steps away from the door, toward Black, and he’s only felt _weird_ until now. Now he feels wired and hot, mind spinning at this chance happening. Even in the dark he can see the red-violet tinge to the rims of Black’s eyes, the few pockmarks on his cheeks, the ghost of a dimple in his wan, relaxed cheek. _Have you really had three wives?_ he wonders, and then thinks, _Well, now you’ll have me, seeing as it’s what you want_. He gets a head rush from the sound of Black’s sharp breath as Remus innocently moves his hand to pluck the fedora from his head, set it on the table nearest. It’s less innocent when he leans in close, smells sweat and intoxicating, twistedly expensive cologne, thinks of Black Avenue and the vague melody of their greatest hit and the man before him, unrecognized on the streets by the generations who scream and wail and claim to know the most about _real music_. Sirius Black is still holding his breath as Remus, fingertips digging into the sharp corner of the table as a sort of pinch-me-out-of-this-strange-dream sensation, but only finds himself hovering close, closer to Sirius’ face, the warm breadth of him. Nothing happens, Sirius doesn’t move, but Remus reads his yearning like it’s written on his skin in inked lyrics. Remus never finds out what Sirius had been about to ask — _If you want to_ — because he tilts his head just so to kiss him.

Sirius is not a large man so much as tall and somewhat stocky, and his tongue is sweet from the coke but his breath sour from whiskey and maybe alcoholism or chewing tobacco but Remus finds he doesn’t mind. His jaw is fleshy as Remus takes it in his hands, holds him firmly as they kiss, tongue against tongue and chest to chest and nose to nose — Black’s nose is a bit pointy, it’s a good nose, and Remus thinks again _what the hell_ until he realizes he’s melting into the kiss, because _Christ_ when Black reciprocates it’s so _needy_, there’s _want_, and that’s something so rare in Remus’ repertoire of experience that screams repeatedly _I just want to get my dick wet and you’re right here so_.

Though isn’t that exactly what this is?

Sirius’ rough palms run up the backs of Remus’ hands with reverence. Remus grips him harder — he won’t break, doesn’t feel like he will.

“Oh, Christ,” mutters Sirius then, gravelly, and his fingertips still rest between Remus’ knuckles and he doesn’t withdraw, but he asks, “How old —”

“Way past legal,” laughs Remus. He licks over Sirius’ lower lip, kisses the corner of his mouth so firm the man in his arms teeters on his heels. “Can’t bartend if you’re under twenty-one.”

“Oh,” Sirius breathes, dark eyes rounded and brow pinched, and Remus nods in confirmation, seeking the strange taste of his mouth again. He complies. He’s so compliant. And his mouth is warmth and comfort and affection to Remus right now, at least in this current microcosm of all his nights. And it’s tasted so much, Remus thinks, so many people. He wants Sirius’ body count, wants Sirius to speak it for him, sing it, even, but he’ll settle for sucking on his tongue, he’ll settle for the hands now fumbling on the fly of Remus’ pants.

“Can I suck you off,” Sirius Black asks him, raspy already.

And Remus bites his lower lip, leans the few inches back so his shoulders flatten to the door but his crotch is right where Sirius can reach it. “Yeah.”

Remus has Sirius Black on his knees.

He’s so gentle as he unzips Remus’ jeans, tugs down on the thick elastic of his briefs. Remus takes pity, leans down enough that he can stop Sirius mid-action with a hand to the cheek, then ease his blazer from his shoulders. He has a tight t-shirt underneath, his arms white and meaty, and the blazer falls to the floor with a silent rustle as Sirius shrugs it off. As if still under Remus’ realm of control, he looks up toward him, hollow gray eyes under a grizzled black fringe, and Remus smiles. He feeds his cock, thick since when he doesn’t know, between Sirius’ soft lips.

Remus is hands-off, then, stretching them far above his head. Wants to see what Sirius will do. His spine pops with the stretch, and he sighs, relaxing into the door again. Sirius’ roughened hands find the soft sides of Remus’ thighs, and he feels the wetness drip down his shaft as Sirius works up the spit, gets him wet from head to base, takes him into his throat and drags his tongue off and on and Jesus, Remus’ chest is rising and falling with breaths that are loud and agonized because it’s good. And he’s so tempted to ask, _Should you be doing this? Aren’t you on tour? Won’t you need to sing?_ but he can’t, not within their bubble of anonymity, not when he’s writhing and basking in the glowing limbo of knowing-not-knowing.

His fingers are knotted in Sirius’ hair, stark black against the tawny hue of Remus’ skin, all faded into grayscale in the dim hotel room. His gut’s in a knot, as is the deepest, innermost part of his soul, eyes lidded as he wavers on a transcendental cliff’s edge, but then he jerks Sirius Black by the hair. Remus’ cock slips from his shiny lips. His chin is spit-slick, and his ringed eyes are glazed over as he tilts his chin up to peer at Remus.

“Get on the bed,” Remus says gently. “And get — undress yourself.”

Remus hesitates a moment, there with his back on the door, to watch the stagger of a grown man not used to spending so long on his knees. By the bed — an enormous, postered thing, swathed in china white — Sirius Black strips almost bashfully, back to Remus. His shoulders are broad and white and his torso is dotted with dark freckles. He wonders how he is on stage… probably not like this.

Remus’ clothes are a puddle by the door when he reaches Sirius. He ghosts fingertips over his shoulders, over a jagged scar on his right bicep. His hair needs a wash. Remus smudges a kiss to the topmost knob of his spine. “I want,” he murmurs into his shoulder, “you… to ride me.”

Sirius turns around and looks over Remus’ face. Less tentative now, at least. Still introspective. Remus isn’t remarkable, not particularly interesting to look at. Still, he doesn’t interrupt, not even when Sirius brushes his fingers through the hair at Remus’ temple, traces the shell of Remus’ ear.

Remus takes the chance to look down Sirius’ body, down the pale swell of his stomach, the wiry, dark hair at his navel. His cock is leaking, and Remus feels a thrill, but a thrill that’s miles away, as if he’s somehow felt it before as he rubs the heel of his hand over Sirius’ shaft, grazes his thumb over the head.

“You’re, uh, you’re quite beautiful,” says Sirius, a whisper that sounds genuine though also like it takes a load out of him to say.

Remus snorts. It’s rude, he knows. He turns his wry smile on Sirius, goes to nudge him backward by the chest, but Sirius resists with a whine-like sound, taking him by the cheeks and kissing him open-mouthed, with fervor. Remus rests the tips of his fingers against the mattress, bracketing Sirius’ hips, moving with and into the kiss until he’s felt the tension leak out of Sirius again.

It’ll be back.

Sirius gets on the bed this time.

Remus might or might not have a condom in his wallet, doesn’t know, but he doesn’t need to know because when he brings it up, Sirius has condoms, plenty of lube, though Remus reads the look on his face as_ I would’ve taken you without_. He _had_ just sucked his dick, anyhow. And Remus is tempted to read into it, into all of this, _deeply_, because the bizarreness of it all is twisted around his head and neck so tight he can only breathe enough to keep himself lucid amidst messily kissing Sirius Black. It’s horrible, says the angel of logic on Remus’ shoulder, when they mutually, silently _forget_ about the condoms on the mattress that Sirius had splayed out, but it feels worthwhile — _as if heaven wouldn’t be worthwhile, _he jeers himself —when Remus has his back to the cool sheets and his cock is lubed and Sirius is tight-hot-heavy sinking down onto him. He tries to lace his fingers with Remus’ — he gets one hand trapped — but his attempts to make out like this, _while_ they’re like this, fail because Remus’ hips are uncontrollable, pumping into him, encouraging him with the words he knows Sirius innately needs. He’s known him two hours and maybe it’s the obscene noises that Sirius makes above him, the lines of tensity in his face, gripped by unearthly pleasure, that inflate Remus’ ego to the point of confidence where he can say _I know you — I know what you want, I know your vulnerabilities, I know this is what you’re hiding_.

Remus doesn’t get chance to get his hand around Sirius’ cock before he comes. His moan is melodic, a high note. Remus thinks he ought to cheer, but he’s too deep in, chasing his own orgasm, and Sirius indulges, gives and gives like he has all night.

Sirius sags onto the mattress beside Remus and it dips under his weight. Remus pictures his hole, leaking, used, and closes his eyes. Sirius spends a while kissing his shoulder, underneath his jaw; it’s too tender, but Remus doesn’t mind. Tonight, it’s affection. Tomorrow, it’ll be a foreign language, untranslatable, forgotten.

* * *

Remus wakes up the way he’d fallen asleep: on top of the covers, on his back. Once he’s rubbed enough sleep from his eyes, he sits upright in the sheets.

His clothes are folded on the end of the bed, but the room is empty, devoid of life. Of Sirius Black.

He finds his phone in the pocket of his jeans, thumbs open the browser. His thumb circles in mid-air before he gives in, Googles _Sirius Black_.

_Top Stories_

_Sirius Black Abruptly Ends Fillmore Show Halfway Through Setlist, Fans In A Rage_

_Sablier To Perform At The Los Angeles Greek Theatre _in two days’ time.

Remus is left in Sirius Black’s hotel room. The latter’s likely halfway to SoCal by now.


End file.
